English Pastoral by James Rebanks (100 books to read .txt) 📕

the plough is a problem. So we are having to figure out how to farm in highly productive ways that work with, and respect, nature, and that means changing how we farm and thinking again about the tools we have become reliant on.

We can grow annual plant crops without the use of the plough, drilling seeds directly into the ground with minimal soil disturbance (called ‘no-till farming’). But this brings new challenges, because how do you kill the harvested crop to make way for the next crop without using a plough to bury it, or chemical sprays to kill the regrowth or weeds? We might someday develop and grow perennial grain plant crops so that ploughing becomes unnecessary (smart people are working on this, but it isn’t a mainstream reality yet). And how do you fertilize the fields without using artificial fertilizers?

The solution to these challenges, in many places, is a return to mixed rotational crop and livestock farming. Instead of artificial fertilizers, livestock and cover crops like clover and legumes are used to feed and heal the soil. Mobs of cattle and sheep eat and trample the crop after harvest to a thatch and subdue regrowth, and eat the arable weeds when the field is returned to grass in the rotation. It turns out the old rules of the field mostly still hold true – we just need to minimize or end ploughing. Ironically, the best new sustainable ‘technologies’ for making exhausted crop-growing soils healthy and fertile again are cows and sheep. That is why the uplands were historically the livestock nursery for lowland areas; huge numbers of sheep and cattle were needed to make plant-based farming possible, and it made sense to produce many of these on the lowest value marginal land.

~

Back at the house, we are scolded by Helen for getting wet through and coming straight in and making a mess. Tom has handfuls of fir cones and drops them in the doorway as we arrive, which doesn’t help matters. Isaac strips to his undies and disappears upstairs to change. ‘Take your clothes with you to the wash,’ shouts Helen. I get my socks off and sit in the oldest chair. Our kitchen smells amazing. Helen has made a chicken and leek pie and potatoes. I tell her about the fencing and the morning’s jobs, and she humours me, pretending to listen, but is preoccupied with her own work: the mail on the worktop, invoices spread out. Her laptop is open. She has spent the morning going over our medicine book because we have an official inspection next week. She does the countless unheralded jobs that keep our home and farm going. And sometimes she looks as if she wants to strangle me or scream at me for leaving her in the house with four kids and a million things to worry about. At other times I see her smiling as our children play in the fields or the beck, or when they are helping us in the sheep pens or the barn, and it seems that she loves this life too. She has fire in her and fights each day for our family. I can only do what I do because Helen devotes her waking hours to supporting the farm and caring for our family. She keeps everything going behind the scenes. She has always been the strong one when I am falling apart.

~

I’m not sure I am much good at being a farmer. It is overwhelming. I can’t get everything done, let alone done well. I am always juggling responsibilities to pay the bills. Often, I get things wrong. The farm makes almost no money, and whatever money it does make, it devours. I am terrified of going broke, of letting it all fall apart. I know now why my father looked beaten at times. The list of jobs I haven’t got done yet grows each month. I could fill two lifetimes mending our fences and walls, laying our hedges, curing every ailing sheep and doing all the work needed on our flock to improve it. I could spend vast sums of money we don’t have on planting trees and creating more wild areas. I could spend even more trying to breed a great herd of pedigree cattle and peerless flocks of sheep. The truth is, a farm swallows you up, takes everything you have, and then asks for more. It is also an exercise in humility: you can’t do it alone.

The biggest lesson I have learned is that the whole idea of the heroic individual ‘farmer’ is a bit of a macho-male myth. It takes a village to make a good farm work. A lot of this work is done by women. My wife, mother and grandmother have all supported this farm, built their lives around it, and suffered the men obsessed with it. But it goes far beyond our family. We rely on so many people who know how to sustain this landscape the traditional way – who can use the old tools to manage hedges, coppice woodland, or grow and plant healthy trees. We turn for advice to good stockmen and women who know about cattle and sheep – when to move them and how, and how to breed them hardy and for local conditions. We need these skilled and thoughtful farming people now more than ever.

I’ve come to realize that we also need a small army of naturalists to help us play our part in the restoration of the countryside. There is more to understand about the ecology of a farm than any farmer can reasonably be expected to know. Admitting I couldn’t do or know everything was scary to begin with. I worried I might not be as strong or as wise as a farmer is meant to be. But the more I have shared and accepted help, the more our farm has become a community. Several ecologists now have a role in our farming – some from government agencies,